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Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Askwith Education Forum, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is endowed through the generosity of Patricia Askwith Kenner and other members of the Askwith family, and acts as a galvanizing force for debate and conversation about education in its narrowest and broadest perspectives. Each year, the Forum welcomes a number of prominent people from diverse fields to speak about issues relevant to education and children. Recent topics have included immigration, values, affirmative action, education reform, and the arts. All of these events are free and open to the public.break

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/askwith

Chinese Americans: Compelled to Excel

Wed, Dec 8, 2004

Vivian Louie, drawing on interviews with second-generation Chinese Americans attending a public, commuter university and a highly selective private university, discusses the power that race and class play in shaping educational experiences. Louie's work is introduced by Mary Waters, chair of the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Panelists will include Suzanne Lee, principal of the Josiah Quincy School in Boston, and Peter Law, senior guidance counselor at Charlestown High School. In the contemporary American imagination, Asian Americans are considered the quintessential immigrant success story, a powerful example of how the culture of immigrant families (rather than race and class) matters in education and upward mobility. Louie finds that Chinese immigrant families see higher education as a necessary safeguard against potential racial discrimination, and class shapes different paths to college. The views and experiences of Chinese Americans with schooling and the identities they are forming have much to do with the opportunities, challenges and contradictions that immigrants and their children confront in the United States.

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Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Students

Tue, Oct 19, 2004

Kathleen Cushman, shares surprising advice from teens she interviewed for her most recent book about how to engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. Kathleen Cushman, a journalist specializing in education and school reform, discusses her latest book, *Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students*. Ms. Cushman interviewed forty teenagers about what teachers could do to better engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. She explains the remarkable insights they offered for improving classroom life and relationships between teachers and students. Every teenager is different, these young people say, but they all need teachers who know them well without violating their boundaries, and who challenge them without humiliating or ignoring them. Ms. Cushman's work offers invaluable techniques for increasing engagement and motivation, teaching demanding academic material, reaching English language learners, and creating classroom cultures where respect and success go hand in hand.

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Arts and Schools: Reconciling Opposites

Thu, Apr 21, 2005

Dick Deasy, director of the Arts Education Partnership in Washington, DC, and editor of Critical Links, speaks about schools and the arts. Sponsored by the John Landrum Bryant Lecture/Performance Series, which is part of the Arts in Education Program.

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Assessing Literacy: Exploring the Reader's Mind and Heart

Thu, Apr 7, 2005

Robert Calfee discusses the importance of effective teaching and active research regarding reading and accessing literacy. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education and Dean, provides an introduction to the lecture.

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Inventing Kindergarten: Seedbed of Modern Art

Thu, May 5, 2005

Norman Brosterman discusses the history of kindergarten and its influence on such modernist giants as Frank Lloyd Wright, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus school. In his book Inventing Kindergarten, Brosterman argues that within this lost world of women and children we can locate the seedbed of modern art. With its emphasis on abstract decomposition and building up from elemental forms, the original kindergarten system of the mid-nineteenth century created an education and design revolution that profoundly affected the course of modern art and architecture, as well as physics, music, psychology and the modern mind itself.

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Closing the Nation's Racial Achievement Gaps I

Thu, May 5, 2005

Organized by the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University, this series kicks off a forum entitled Race, Culture, and K-12 Achievement Gaps. Popular discourse among national leaders has assumed that some black and Latino youth are embedded in a culture that is oppositional to achievement and that this culture is a major impediment to narrowing the nation's achievement gaps. The speakers present a more complex picture, identifying issues upon which future research will be helpful, and suggesting some practical implications of the emerging research consensus. Panelists include Prudence Carter, assistant professor of sociology, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Ronald Ferguson, lecturer of public policy, Kennedy School of Government; and Mica Pollock, assistant professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Closing the Nation's Racial Achievement Gaps II

Tue, May 10, 2005

Organized by the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University, this is the second in a series of forums that address Racial Gaps in College Access and Success. Closing achievement gaps is not merely a matter for K-12 educators. People of color are underrepresented among students who enter college; they have less success in college and complete college at a lower rate than whites. Speakers review what we know from research and suggest implications for policy and practice as well as for additional research under the AGI umbrella. Panelists include Christopher Avery, Roy E. Larsen professor of public policy, Kennedy School of Government; Bridget Terry Long, associate professor of education and economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Vivian Shuh Ming Louie, assistant professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Closing the Nation's Racial Achievement Gaps III

Thu, May 12, 2005

Organized by the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University, this is the third in a series of forums addressing Racial Gaps in School Readiness: The Importance of Early Childhood. Public discourse about achievement gaps is typically focused on what happens in schools and classrooms. However, the fact is that racial achievement gaps exist on the first day of kindergarten. The evening's speakers will discuss research evidence on the size of the gaps that exist by kindergarten, research based explanations for those gaps, and some of the implications for policy and practice. This forum will feature Roland Fryer, Economics Department, Harvard University; David Grissmer, senior management scientist, Rand Corporation; and Kathleen McCartney, professor of education and academic dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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What Does Good Work Look Like?

Thu, Mar 3, 2005

Educator Ron Berger lectures on the study and research of student work, and how to improve the work produced by students by giving them models to to base their own works from. **Ron Berger** served as a public school teacher in western Massachusetts for 25 years. He works with the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound school network, Harvard Project Zero, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His new book from Heinemann is An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship in Schools. This lecture is a part of the John Landrum Bryant Lecture/Performance Series, sponsored by the Arts in Education Program and supported by the Bauman Foundation.

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Framing Education as Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day

Tue, Mar 22, 2005

Lecturing from her book Framing Education as Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day, Jessica Hoffmann Davis, offers suggestions for making non-arts education more connected to and like the arts. This discussion is part of the John Landrum Bryant Lecture/Performance Series, sponsored by the HGSE Arts in Education Program and supported by the Bauman Foundation.

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